STAYING HUMAN IN INHUMAN TIMES

In 1601, Shakespeare wrote these exquisite lines about our potential as human beings:

"What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals."

 

 Michelangelo's David

the Academia, Florence

Credit: REA

Shakespeare was not the first or the last to express a grand vision of what an individual human can be. Hamlet followed Michelangelo's David--an immortal illustration of a courageous individual facing an overpowering adversary--by a century, and preceded the Age of Enlightenment by many decades. From the 1680s until the end of the next century, philosophers, scientists and enlightened leaders--including the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution--developed and advanced similar ideals, summed up by the German philosopher Emmanuel Kant as:

". . . the courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to Know! . . . Have the courage to use your own understanding."

We find ourselves today in a situation where our government, many of our leaders, and other powers  including giant corporations, are bidding or manipulating us to act in ways, or go along with actions, that are inhuman, immoral, and intrinsically disgusting. One example is the Trump/Sessions decision to separate children, even infants, from their parents for purely political reasons, with no plan in place to reunite them or even care for them adequately.

Whether you identify yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, a member of the Tea Party, an Independent, a Libertarian, an Evangelical, an atheist, an advocate of some other group or cause, or none of the above, should not make any difference; tearing children from their parents' arms is simply and terribly wrong.

In this case, the outraged response of millions of people plus rejection by the courts forced the Trump administration to change course and begin to reunite the families it had torn apart. Tragically, many families are still separated, some may never be reunited*, and many children may have been irreparably traumatized by this policy.

However, with Trump and his administration still in power, and with a Congress and, increasingly, a judiciary willing to support him, and with implacable corporations seeking to maximize profits at any cost, we can be sure that this will not be the last outrageous and morally repugnant policy that we, the citizens of the United States, will be expected to accept and implement. Whether it is the grindingly slow pace of reuniting families, the horrible conditions immigrants face in our privatized prison system, the killing of innocent civilians in drone strikes, discharging immigrant soldiers, polluting the environment, destabilizing the climate, or, perhaps the worst case scenario, going to war with Iran or North Korea, we will inevitably be confronted by stark choices between our human values and national or corporate policies.

Clearly there are many people and groups who would like nothing more than to ring a dark curtain down on the Enlightenment, and replace its ideals of the value, rights  and responsibilities of each individual human being with a mindless and amoral obedience to (their) authority. As Trump said about North Korea's absolute ruler, Kim Jong Un, "He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."

At any given time, most of us will be bystanders or witnesses to these events. I would argue that this is not a time for passivity or inaction; we all need to speak out and act as our conscience dictates. Inevitably, however, some of us will be on the front lines of current or coming events. You may be an ICE or DHS agent, a prison guard, a lawyer being asked to justify an immoral policy, a psychologist asked to advise on torture, a pilot or flight attendant transporting immigrant children, a drone pilot asked to bomb "targets" thousands of miles away, or someone high or low in any number of organizations. If you are being asked or expected to do something that you find morally repugnant, I would plead with you to have the courage to blow the whistle, resist or refuse.

Here's a great example from a very courageous young woman who calmly stood her ground and single-handedly stopped a deportation--bravo to Elin Ersson. 

Dictators, tyrants, cult leaders and abusers of all kinds rely on followers willing to do their bidding. Let's recognize that any of us may find ourselves somewhere in their sphere of influence or line of command, and in preparation make our own declaration of independence. If, as Kant said, we have the courage to use and act on our own understanding, perhaps then we will see the results of following the better angels of our nature rather than the whims and wishes of the narcissists, fanatics, idealogues, oe the most profit- or power-hungry among us.

REA

*The latest reports indicates that it may take years to reunite many of these immigrant parents and children.  Why? Mark Greenberg, a fellow at the Immigrant Policy Institute, explains, shockingly, that ". . . there wasn't initial tracking to maintain a link between parents and their children."

The failure of the Trump administration even to maintain adequate records to eventually allow parents and children to find each other and be reunited is detailed in a recently released 25-page report by the US Office of the Inspector General. You can read the entire report here. The callous cruelty of this policy and the way it was carried out are profoundly repugnant.

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Surprise--liberal values promote economic growth

Liberals are often accused of blocking economic growth, what with our penchant for rules and regulations to protect the environment, mitigate climate change, rein in financial speculation and predation, provide equal rights and opportunities to minorities and other disadvantaged groups and "waste" money on frivolities such as health care and education.

New research, however, shows that this belief is simply wrong--a rise in liberal values, especially respect for individual rights, preceded and predicted economic growth in a variety of countries throughout the 20th Century.

 

Surprise--progressive values boost economic growth

Image credit: Creative Commons 

As reported in the prestigious journal Science Advances, researchers at the University of Bristol, in the UK, and at the University of Tennessee in the US used large data sets on European and world values, along with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita to trace changes in secular vs. religious values and economic development throughout the 20th Century. They were able to rule out the hypothesis that economic growth came first and stimulated secularization or liberalization. Rather, increases in liberal values, especially tolerance of differences and respect for individual rights, consistently preceded and predicted growth in per capita GDP.

The authors point out that one powerful factor behind this effect is a fuller use of human resources. When the rights and value of women and other disadvantaged groups are respected, and they are included in the workforce, economic productivity surges.

The bottom line--the common presumption that progressive ideas impede economic growth is wrong. Instead, acceptance of "others," and opening doors to everyone's inclusion and development are powerful drivers of economic growth.

REA

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THE AMERICAN CENTURY: AN OBITUARY

 It’s difficult to pinpoint precisely when ‘The American Century’ died, but close observers place its passing somewhere between the 9^th and 16^th of July, 2018 after a long Illness. Cause of death has been tentatively listed as complications due to ‘heart failure.’

Credit: USAF

Born in 1941, it was christened by Time/Life media founder Henry Luce just as the United States was emerging from a Depression decade marked by isolationism and severe economic hardship, and mere months before the nation would be plunged into the Second World War. The fresh and timely concept was quickly adopted, for better or worse, by key architects of the coming transformation of America’s postwar foreign policy into one of internationalism, intervention and global leadership.

            Reflecting the optimistic side of a victorious and expanding middle-class society, ‘The American Century’ grew to express a strong belief in sharing the benefits and bounty of a booming domestic economy along with the energetic promotion of democratic-capitalist ideology abroad. Despite debilitating setbacks and growing pains in the late 1960’s and 1970’s as a consequence of deep racial conflicts at home and the country’s failed policies in Southeast Asia, belief in the concept rebounded strongly in the 1980’s and 1990’s, particularly during the nation’s brief appearance as sole global hegemon following the fall of the Soviet Union.  

The 9/11 terrorist attack on the homeland, however, coupled with disastrous and inconclusive interventions abroad and a serious economic debacle in the early decades of the twenty-first century drained its reserves, leaving it much more vulnerable than many knew to the next new contagion that might come along.  Ironically, the fatal infection came from within in the guise of a virulent campaign to “Make America Great Again,” against which the national immune system proved ineffective.

With an alternative and distorted image of both the postwar world  and American values in mind, and in the service of his own much narrower and darker nationalist vision, once in power Donald Trump moved rapidly and effectively to devalue, reverse and ultimately erase the very policies Luce and other leaders of that era had spent decades putting in place to stabilize a troubled world. 

In rolling back America’s leadership promoting worldwide democracy, and in erecting barriers to free trade and the easy movement of goods, ideas and people across boundaries, demeaning and demonizing allies and carefully-constructed institutions like NATO and the EU, Trump offered in their place only a world of competition, conflict, contention—and often chaos.

 If Luce’s “Century” represented an overly optimistic missionary American spirit, often blind to its own failings, Trump’s stands for its opposite, one which is fearful, suspicious of others, anxiously hoarding its own resources, and hostile to realities which might challenge its own preconceptions. Rather than celebrating and spreading America’s political norms and the nation’s ideals of inclusion, equality and opportunity—even if imperfectly achieved—Trump celebrates their disruption, while actively generating and directing the resentments of those left behind against minorities and real or imagined aliens or other foreign elements.

   

The final blow came with Trump's public attacks on  core institutions and allies and his embrace of old foes. When the call came from Helsinki this week, it only confirmed what many had already suspected. The decedent's last words were incoherent--disjointed phrases about a missing server--and it was noted in passing that a Do Not Resuscitate order was on file. 

Les Adler
Emeritus Professor of History
Sonoma State University

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A slightly different version of this commentary was also published on OpEdNews.

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REX TILLERSON STRAIGHTENS US OUT ON AMERICAN VALUES VS AMERICA'S ACTIONS

On May 3, Secretary of State and ex-CEO of EXXON Rex Tillerson gave a speech to assembled State Department staff to interpret for them what President Trump's "America first" slogan means in practice.

Rex Tillerson, 2009

Credit: William Munoz

Tillerson led off with a few comments about "our fundamental values."

"I think it’s important to also remember that guiding all of our foreign policy actions are our fundamental values: our values around freedom, human dignity, the way people are treated. Those are our values."

I suppose he could have added a few more "values around," ideals such as equality and unalienable rights, including to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but fine, at least he mentioned a few of the values that have in fact made America great.

Unfortunately, in his very next sentence he puts those values high up on a shelf where they can look good but can't cause any trouble:

"Those are not our policies; they’re values. And the reason it’s important, I think, to keep that well understood is policies can change. They do change. They should change. Policies change to adapt to the – our values never change. They’re constant throughout all of this."

The rest of his talk is about our policies--what we actually try to advance in the real world. According to Tillerson, they boil down to two--security and profit:

"And so we really have to understand, in each country or each region of the world that we’re dealing with, what are our national security interests, what are our economic prosperity interests . . ."

or again:

"So I give you that as kind of an overarching view of how I think about the President’s approach of 'America first.' We must secure the nation. We must protect our people. We must protect our borders. We must protect our ability to be that voice of our values now and forevermore. And we can only do that with economic prosperity. So it’s foreign policy projected with a strong ability to enforce the protection of our freedoms with a strong military."

What a great arrangement. We can have our high ideals and laudable values. We can pride ourselves on them and hold them up as examples for others to follow. But first and foremost we must "protect our ability to be that voice of our values" by projecting them with our strong military and making sure that the whole enterprise is profitable.

Despite the high-minded rhetoric, it seems to me that a person's or a nation's actions pretty much define their values. If I lie, cheat and steal, those are my values. If I abuse my wife, my kids, my students, clients or employees, those are my values. If we start preemptive wars, we value starting wars. If we kidnap people and keep them locked in Guantanamo for decades without trial, we value that. If we torture, we value that. If we kill hundreds or thousands with bombs or drones, we value that. If we close our borders to those most in need of sanctuary, we value that. Our actions, not our words, are the "voice of our values."

For a slightly different take on Trump and Tillerson's policies, which the author describes as "vulgar realism," click here.

If Tillerson as Secretary of State, or Trump as President, or we as a nation want to practice realpolitik--or as Ludwig von Rochau described it, the law of power--so be it. That's how most countries, and especially empires, act.

Let's just not wrap our iron fist and grasping hand in the Declaration of Independence so that we can pretend to be what we palpably are not.

Note: As of August 1, 2017, a new State Department mission statement is being drafted that clearly lays out Tillerson's new vision. Gone is the aim of fostering "a peaceful, prosperous, just and democratic world . . . for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere." As promised, the new focus is on "the security, prosperity and interests of the American people globally . . .."

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A simple intervention can inoculate female college students against the stereotype that they can't do well in science

New research by a team at the University of Colarado, in Boulder, adds to the growing number of studies showing that surprisingly minimal interventions -- in this case having university students in an introductory physics class write two 15-minute essays about the values that are most important to them and why they are personally important -- can boost the grades and achievement levels of students whose performance would otherwise be stunted by the debilitating effects of negative stereotypes.

You can read about research on the surprisingly powerful effects of negative stereotypes in this New Scientist article.

And about some of the research on simple interventions to inoculate the targets of negative stereotypes against them, here.

And about the most recent research in my Suite101 posting, here.

Robert Adler

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